Cambridge Coincidences Collection

Professor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University wants to know about your coincidences!

I moved across the US 3,000 miles away from a small obscure town in California to a small obscure town in Maryland. On my very first day I went to a local supermarket two miles from the house and as I was walking in the store a man walked out who I recognized. He was a former co-worker who I had last seen two years prior in that small town in California. We were completely floored to see each other.

1. I was waiting in line at hardware store in Houston when a long plank someone had leaned against the counter slid down and bonked me on the head. I had to sit down for a minute, stunned. After a few minutes, the cashier said he had taken the name and address off the check of the customer whose plank it was (in case i wanted to pursue it, although it should be store responsible, not the customer). I did not want to, but I took a glance at it-- the address was an apartment building I had previously lived at, including the same apartment number.
2. I met a girl in a bar and we were chatting.

I was driving along and stop just before the lights which was red, I was playing a particular song on my CD then out of the blue a individual walked in front of my car and came to my window which was open at the time and dropped an album inside at first i thought it was something dodgy, i looked to see where the person was but he had disappeared when i picked up the album it was the person i was listening to on my CD.

Whilst researching Carl G Jung and synchronicity for my dissertation, my husband turned the TV on and the program mimicked the exact same words As I read them in perfect synchronisation....the contexts of my reading and the TV program were entirely unrelated...but the string of words were exact....very odd! I took it as a good omen with regards to my writing.

I had my horse freeze marked, I had no choice in the numbers they are totally random - the only two numbers amongst the letters were 69
I bought an old Landrover, I didn't notice until I had it that the number plate said 69 (no other numbers)
I moved house, when we got the paperwork I noticed the house number is 69
I started a new job, got my payslip and my payroll number is 69!
What are the chances of that?

I was helping my children ride their pony. After we had finished I noticed my grandmother's diamond was missing from her engagement ring that I wear all of the time. I hunted and hunted for it but as my yard was surrounded by gravel did not find it.
I went back inside, walked out of the back door, saw a glint from the sun being reflected from something and it was my diamond shining in the middle of a big gravel drive.

My mother moved to Rugby, we had always lived in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire or London for a couple of generations.
She was talking to a couple of ladies that were now her neighbours. They were discussing where they had previously lived. They described a flat on the King's Road in London that they had lived in in the 70's with a man that lived above them with various distinguishing features including two young children. This turned out to be my father (and at the time my mother's ex-husband), the children were my brother and me.

I will have to shorten this story quite a bit! - I originate from Hertfordshire and moved to Norfolk 14 years' ago. Some time ago I was investigating my family tree and friended my mother's 2nd cousin on facebook. A little while ago I noticed a picture of him in my local pub, when I asked him what he was doing there he told me he lived down the road (in the village my son went to school) - quite a coincidence being as this side of my family were from West Susses.

my mother comes from a large family and only kept in contact with a couple of her siblings. when i was growing up i knew one of her sisters lived in Benalla (a town 40 mins drive from the town I grew up in) but I had never met her or her family. I also knew the names of her 5 children but that was all and I never gave them or any of my other estranged relatives a thought over the years. i left home at 17 and moved to melbourne where i lived for 10 yrs and then i moved to Benalla (a town of 8000 people )having by then completely forgotten about the fact that i had relatives living there.